First Love, Then a Rape Case, Then Marriage

Longtime couple Alok, left, and Rashmi wed this year after she became pregnant and used rape law to press him to marry.

The Wall Street Journal carried a page-one story detailing such accounts. Click here to read the story in full.

When Rashmi, then 21, moved to India’s capital in late 2008, she had never had a boyfriend. And she didn’t plan to. She came to India’s capital to focus on her career as an architect and get ahead. In her first job in the city, she oversaw the construction of a new office building in Noida.

But when Alok showed up in the office after a vacation, she immediately noticed him. “An accountant is the most important person because he has his hands on the money,” she said. “But he greeted every single person when he came back, he treated everyone the same, with respect.”

Advertisement

Mr. Alok had moved to the city a few years earlier to keep an eye on the “genius” of the family, a younger brother who had enrolled in an engineering course. “It’s a big capital,” he said. “I had knowledge about the world’s good and bad.” The brothers shared a room in east Delhi.

Mr. Alok was not interested in romance either. His mother would call him and tell him: “Steer clear of girls. That would be wrong.” His parents had started looking at wives for him after he finished high school, but he told them he would marry when he was earning enough to support a family comfortably.

But over pizza and veggie burgers at the office, Mr. Alok and Ms. Rashmi started to get to know one another. Mr. Alok had no female friends before then. In school, in his village in Bihar, beyond a few questions about that day’s lessons, it wasn’t acceptable for male and female students to socialize.

“We can’t be as narrow minded as our parents,” he said, “My mind was open.”

It turned out Mr. Alok lived not far from Ms. Rashmi, who was living with a college friend. After work, the two would meet up and grab juice at an outdoor stall. Soon, they were in a relationship.

On a trip home in the summer he showed his parents her picture and asked whether they would accept her as his wife.

But his mother said that Ms. Rashmi was a city girl and would not be able to adapt to life in the village. She also said that Ms. Rashmi might not have the same values as a village girl. “What if she wants to divorce you one day?” Mr. Alok recalls his mother as saying.

Mr. Alok, the oldest son, said he was conscious of being a role model for his younger brother. If he didn’t follow his parents’ wishes in his marriage, it would set a bad example. “I knew I had to marry someone who would take care of my parents,” he said. “It was going to be a family decision.”

Still, Mr. Alok spoke to his parents twice more about Ms. Rashmi. But they insisted she was not the right choice for their daughter-in-law.

“In our India, whether it’s a modern family or a lower family, the parents want to choose the daughter-in-law themselves,” said Ms. Rashmi. “They think we’ve spent so much on our son, now we should get something back.”

Tripti Lahiri/The Wall Street Journal

Alok holding his daughter.

In 2011, Mr. Alok and Ms. Rashmi’s relationship came to an abrupt end. Mr. Alok’s brother-in-law died of a heart attack and his parents called him back to the village to look out for his newly widowed sister. Mr. Alok left his job and went home to show his sister’s in-laws that she was not alone.

“When there’s an accidental death people put pressure on the woman,” he said. “The in-laws say things like, ‘Why did you do this to our son?’”

Ms. Rashmi decided to leave the city then too. She says she didn’t want to be here without him. They left the city on the same train.

Months later Ms. Rashmi couldn’t stop thinking about him. “It was impossible to forget him,” she said. So Ms. Rashmi decided to visit him in his village. On the phone he told her, “Don’t come. It won’t go well.”

She went anyway. Mr. Alok took her home to meet his entire family and took her around the village on a motorbike.

“I had feelings for her,” he said. “I didn’t want to hide her away in a hotel.”

Ms. Rashmi didn’t wear a veil like other women in the village, spurring gossip. And she couldn’t speak with Mr. Alok’s mother because she couldn’t understand the village dialect. “I had to be the interpreter,” said Mr. Alok.

Seeing the reaction of people in the village, Ms. Rashmi thought she had made a mistake.

“After I went there I thought I shouldn’t have gone,” she said. “In Delhi, it’s normal for boys and girls to spend time together. But not in the village.”

She left with a heavy heart.

According to Ms. Rashmi, Mr. Alok told his mother, “With time we’ll forget each other. You go ahead and arrange my marriage with whomever you want.”

His family began talks with the family of a local girl.

Mr. Alok came back to Delhi to get a new job. His wedding was to be in February. He again began seeing Ms. Rashmi again, but the couple increasingly fought.

Ms. Rashmi knew about his engagement and begged him to call it off. But Mr. Alok said it wasn’t possible. One day, in January, Ms. Rashmi told him she was pregnant. “You’re lying,” he responded. He thought it was a ploy to get him to break off his engagement, he said.

“I was hurt,” she said.

She was so angry that she went to the local police station. To her surprise, he was there too, to report she was harassing him. “She had begun to bother me a lot, threatening to commit suicide,” he said.

That day she filed a rape complaint against him. Ms. Rashmi’s medical exam confirmed she was pregnant. Mr. Alok was immediately arrested and sent to jail.

Mr. Alok and Ms. Rashmi married in February. Later, a judge, on seeing proof of the marriage, quashed the criminal complaint against Mr. Alok.

His village was shocked. The family of the girl he was engaged to came to his family’s house outraged. His parents had to pay them money. “I lost a lot. Everyone got to know,” he said. “The reputation I had in society is gone.”

He still feels bad for the girl he was engaged to. When a girl is supposed to get married and it doesn’t happen, people think she must be unlucky and that hurts her chances of a future marriage, he said.

Ms. Rashmi says it makes her feel bad to see how sad Mr. Alok is after talking to his mother, who often calls to report a remark someone in the village has made about what happened. “But if we hadn’t got married maybe I wouldn’t still be in the world today,” she said.

Mr. Alok says that for some time after their wedding, he remained angry at Ms. Rashmi for accusing him of rape and ruining his reputation in the village.

But, he says, her gentleness and patience with his anger soothed his feelings. “She really loves me a lot.”

When their daughter was born in July, Mr. Alok named her. Her name, in English, means “best of all.”

About India Real Time

India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.